Tag Archives: auto industry

With his teleprompters present, on Tuesday, February 28, 2012, President Barack Hussein Obama attended a United Auto Workers (UAW) meeting in Washington DC. Obama’s speech, billed as a policy speech, was more like a campaign pep rally. Said Obama, “Some politicians even said we should ‘let Detroit go bankrupt!‘ You remember that?” But there is one little problem. While the November 18, 2008 New York Times op-ed was titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” Mitt Romney never said that. In fact, the Romney op-ed mentioned not a word about bankruptcy. Rather, it provided his thoughts on what the government bail-out should accomplish. Yet another example of Obama lying, playing to his audience, and the MSM covering for him.

While speaking at the UAW meeting, Obama made no mention of Delphi employees, how his bail-out deal caused thousands of non-union autoworkers to be thrown “under the bus.” Obama, when criticized that his bailout was a union payoff, said that all workers sacrificed to save the auto industry. He said, “Retirees saw a reduction in the health-care benefits they had earned. Many of you saw hours reduced, or pay and wages scaled back.” But upon further inspection, we see that the bail-out sacrifices were not distributed equally. Rather, they were redistributed politically. Consider these specific points:

Non-union pensioners who worked for Delphi, a GM auto-parts company, lost all of their health and life insurance benefits.

In the rush to nationalize the auto industry and avoid contested court termination proceedings, the White House auto team schemed with union officials to preserve UAW members’ pension funds.

Dealers and suppliers faced closures based on political connections and lobbying clout.

Bondholders were demonized personally by Obama as greedy and stingy, and while trying to protect their property and contractual rights, got cheated, got less than they invested.

Meanwhile, Timothy Geithner served simultaneously as co-chair of the Auto Task Force, board member of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBCG, the federal agency overseeing pension payments to bankrupt companies) and treasury secretary. Let’s see… Geithner was on Obama’s Auto Task Force that saved union jobs, the PBCG that saved UAW pensions, and Geithner’s Treasury Department and General Motors (GM) closely coordinated their public relations strategy and collaborated on making fraudulent claims about GM repaying all of its government loans. Can anyone say “conflict of interest?”

But the larger question is, “Where is the MSM?” Why were not any of these facts, especially the plight of the non-union Delphi employees, reported? Why did the MSM not call Obama on his lying, or at least mention that Romney’s op-ed said nothing about letting Detroit go bankrupt? They portrayed Obama’s bail-out as a success story, never mentioning any of the people and companies who were hurt.